Mein gott in la la land! Der Ahhhnold ist ein multi-talented mutter humper, ja? The Gangwashi Church theme park for the Forbidden City? With — Tireless Staff of Thousands EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

In a word: “The Prince and the Showgirl,” starring Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe] was a disaster almost from the beginning. Olivier should have expected trouble. He had asked William Wyler what she was like to work with, and he had replied, “Hitler.” “Olivier,” a new biography based almost exclusively on primary sources. In fact, […]

Our favorite philosopher John Gray on René Descartes, by way of a nauseating shouts of a radical Muslim, as he watches an old video showing the decapitation of Nicholas Berg by his Iraqi captors: “Go to hell, enemy of God! Kill him! Kill him! Yes, like that! Cut his throat properly. Cut his head off! […]

He’s never at a loss for rhymes. In re: the — Leon Freilich EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

“Europe Central” — the WWII tale to remember. Most people have never heard of Elser, although he nearly changed the course of history 66 years ago this month — on Nov. 8, 1939, to be precise — when he tried to assassinate Hitler by planting a bomb in the Munich beer hall where the Führer […]

Isn’t it time to drop religious faith from human belief? Kansas Yahoos will be dogging us forever with their biblical delusions. In an article in Harvard Magazine called There is something deep in religious belief that divides people and amplifies societal conflict. In the early part of this century, the toxic mix of religion and […]

Invent your own. We think the guy on his knees is looking for the

She came. Der Standard complained that her “creative method” was “often inflated” and that her “extreme agility and dynamics” made her seem, “in gesture,” like a “hyperactive flight controller [who] rages, pushes, presses herself into the music, as if her art were a constant boxing match, a musical sports trainer.” As promised, a li’l somethin’ […]

More firebrand than elder statesman, Gore Vidal at 80 is proof that celebrity may not be such a bad thing. As “America’s most visible radical public intellectual,” to quote Doug Ireland’s description of him, Vidal has been exploiting his calculated celebrity “to explain to a large public the insidious effects of America’s domination by a […]

We hope you didn’t miss know-nothing column about “French gangsta rap” and hip-hop culture in re: the suburban French riots. (The column, posted Thursday, is hidden behind the TimesSelect subscription wall, hélas, but you’ll get his drift from the critique.) Also, in re: the Evangelical theme park Leon Freilich offers this verse commentary:

Will Mel Gibson cut the ribbon? American Evangelicals are to unveil plans for a $60-million theme park in the Holy Land. But

A forerunner of performance art? “Company of Pianos”] is that of the huge bonfire on the beach of Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1904, when a thousand square pianos were burned to a crisp. The main manufacturers got together to put on this show in order to declare the “square” dead. That quote, from a

“Zut alors!”

We see that ABC News: Arts and Entertainment, has has a gig to guest-conduct the 99.99999% all-male Vienna Philharmonic in a concert this coming weekend (which will make her the first woman ever to do so). (See the Postscript.) CIRCLE JERKS, our recent item about the orchestra’s sexism, Rodgers wonders “whether [the orchestra’s] long-standing critics […]

In re: Scroll to the postscript. — TSoT EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

We like the way the Los Angeles Times put it, with all eight “No”s, though you’d never know from the photo what happened: No, No, No, No, No, No, No, No Schwarzenegger ‘Sequel’ Couldn’t Captivate Voters — Tireless Staff of Thousands EmailFacebookTwitterReddit